Jay sidled closer. Close enough to overwhelm her senses with his hypnotic scent. He looked deep into her eyes and gazed at her with such intensity that ripples of sensual pleasure danced over her flesh.
“Did you forget this project is top secret, Laura? If Little Jay, as you so kindly named him, goes AWOL while I’m having sex, don’t you think my date would get just a little suspicious?”
Okay, so apparently he’d never suffered from a bout of impotence. That didn’t really surprise her. Thrill her? Yes. Surprise her? No. Too bad the last guy she’d dated couldn’t claim the same victory. That whole relationship had played out like a romantic comedy, without the romance. She’d only been serious with two guys and neither one of them had ever taken the time to satisfy her sexually. The kind of men she attracted only cared about their own pleasures and left her needing to take matters into her own hands. Literally. Now she simply avoided the dating scene. Why bother with the middleman when she could go straight to ecstasy with her battery-operated best friend?
Jay’s leg shifted and brushed against hers. A fine tremor moved through her as she reacted to his touch. Mercy!
Perhaps she’d pick up extra batteries on the way home.
Laura had never had casual sex in her life, but if Jay was offering his services, that would certainly make her rethink things. Because judging by the number of women who’d called the lab after a night with him, she knew he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d leave a woman high and dry.
Slick, wet, and satisfied, yes. High and dry, never.
She shrugged and focused her thoughts. “You’re a resourceful guy. If you deflate, just make up an excuse.”
His head descended; his lips, warm and silky, hovered only inches from hers. She found his total disregard for her personal space titillating and began to quiver in her most private places.
“I have a better idea,” he said.
The heat in his eyes intrigued her. “Really?” Did that idea involve the two of them naked and a bottle of chocolate syrup? Lord knows she was always open to ideas involving chocolate, or syrup, or the two of them naked.
“Yeah, a really great idea.” Exquisite pleasure swept over her when his hair brushed against the nape of her neck. Eyes fixated on hers, he fingered her pristine white lab coat. “I think you should take this off, go home, and have a long, hot bubble bath.”
In a motion so fast it caught her off guard, he pulled the plastic clip from her tightly coiled bun, allowing her long chestnut curls to tumble over her shoulders.
Without pause, he continued. “Then I want you to slip into your silkiest lingerie.”
He was kidding, right? He’d never given her a second glance before. She wasn’t even his type.
“Well…?” he asked. “Are you game?”
What made him think she’d be willing to turn into slut-in-silk for their research? For him?
Okay, so she’d be willing. But there was no freaking way she was going to admit to him just how willing she was.
She shook her head to clear it. Surely she was suffering from delusions, probably a side effect from working with the suppressant.
He had to be kidding.
The devil’s grin spread across his handsome face. “If I don’t get aroused, we’ll know the potion worked.”
So he wasn’t kidding.
Trying for casual, she tipped her chin to look him square in the eyes. “And if you do get aroused?”
A playful glint danced in his eyes as his gaze roamed over her. When he reached out to caress her cheek with his thumb, a torrid heat seeped into her skin. Laura moistened her lips and tried to ignore the elevated thud of her pulse.
His bad-boy gaze settled on her mouth. “Sweetheart, if I do get aroused, the possibilities are endless.”
Chapter 2
Jay tucked a bottle of red wine under his arm and climbed the stairs to Laura’s apartment two at a time. He’d thought of nothing else all day except what her curvaceous body would look like dressed in silky lingerie. He felt his semi-erect cock grow another inch just imagining it now. His flesh lubricated in anticipation as each footstep took him closer to her door.
Seeing her half naked for research purposes was pure bullshit and he knew it. Although he had to admit doing it in the name of science certainly put an erotic spin on things.
There was something about Laura Manning that physically pulled at him the way no other woman had. She was a lethal combination of intelligence, innocence, and sensuality.
She got under his skin and warmed his body like a quick shot of brandy. He had it bad for her. So bad, in fact, that for the past couple of months he hadn’t even had the inclination to go on another date. The calluses on his palms were proof of that. Casual sex had lost its appeal when all he could think about was how he wanted to be palming the contours of a woman who was soft and curvy, sweet and sexy.
Even though he felt an overwhelming physical attraction to Laura, it wasn’t like he would ever develop a deeper emotional bond with her. Like his father and the rest of the Cutler men before him, he wasn’t cut out for lifelong commitment. Lord knows his mother had beaten that fact into him. Not one of the Cutler men in his father’s generation had ever had a lasting relationship. After his father bailed on the family, his mother referred to the clan as the “Cold-Hearted Cutlers.”
Jay knew his mother despised him, likely because he was the spitting image of his father. She repeatedly assured him he’d grow up to follow in the Cutler footsteps. The only people who had faith in him and believed he would grow into a fine, respectable man were his childhood best friend Dino Moretti and
